Saison Belgian Style
Granville Island Brewery

 

 

 

 

 

Nice bright, hazy golden color with a big old sticky head to it.
Aromas of sweet pears and subtle spices.
Like it. Interesting flavors at play that come and go, all balanced with enough hop bitterness to keep it from getting too sweet or cloying. I got citrus, pepper, lemongrass, and a pear fruitiness.
Very quaffable and well worth a try. Nice to see Granville can still make some very good small batch beers

 

 

Appearance: Ripe apricot coloured yellow haze with a soft foamy fairly white head. Frothy and bubbly and pretty quick dissipation to a thin ringlet around the glass.

Aromatics: Fruity and floral with citrus are most pronounced, and those sit atop a toasted grain/cereal with an ever so subtle spice at the very end.

Taste: There is a fair bit of sour behind and apple fruitiness, has a fairly good zippy tang to it with a peppered yeasty aftertaste.

Feel: Great carbonation gives it a crisp snap with a light to middle weight body. Soft and dough-like consistency through the middle wash and mellows out into a tangy bitterness into a rather dry finish.

Overall: Not too shabby… I rather enjoyed it. It is definitely a sit back and relax on the patio type drink. Even after it starts to warm up it has a lot to offer in aroma and flavour.

650ml bottle - the latest in Granville Island's 'Small Batch' series. The name says it all.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, yet bright medium golden yellow colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat creamy bone-white head, which leaves some European peninsula (ok, it looks like a map of Denmark) lace around the glass as it quickly sinks away. Lots of swirling effervescence, too.

It smells of grainy and biscuity pale malt, wheaten cereal, subtle earthy yeast, a soft table-top pepper mill dustiness, indistinct pome fruit notes, and gentle leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy wheatiness, paired with a touch of caramel sweetness, applesauce and overripe pears, a mixed white pepper and clove spiciness, befuddled yeast, and more laid-back earthy, weedy, and slightly perfumed floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite active in its gently probing, but otherwise palate-coddling frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, just a bit of yeasty and peppery interlopers causing a minor fuss here. It finishes off-dry, the mixed-seeming malt doing well to push on, amongst the falling embers of fruit, spice, hop, and booze alike.

Overall, a pretty engaging and easy to get into version of the style, with the typical astringent esters keeping to the background, and that nice fruitiness softening things even further. Hey, if the nanny state was a bit more lenient around here, I could very well see enjoying this stuff in a nearby green space - unfortunately, they're all school fields. Ah well.